There is no shortage of Internet forums filled with energetic contributors all predicting the imminent collapse of the West. Communicating about current events, culture, war, and the economy, a multitude of anonymous speakers publicize their worries every day. Western governments — increasingly insecure, hostile to tradition, and unmoored from any abiding principles — have decided that the best way to project strength is to silence critics.
As European governments more overtly embrace censorship and criminalize speech, the incremental push toward a regulated online system requiring authenticated digital identities promises a future when only government-engineered narratives will be approved for public expression. Society will lose another “pressure release valve” as the Western Establishment welds shut the ventilators of public debate — hoping to trap citizens’ combustible grievances deep underground.
This century has been eye-opening for many reasons. Technological innovation has weakened institutional control over public opinion and empowered regular people to question authorities in meaningful ways. Among the important revelations that have subsequently come to light is the inescapable conclusion that Western governments are not at all committed to free speech. For many Westerners who lived through the Cold War, this has come as a bit of a shock.
The principal distinction that supposedly separated the Soviet Union from the “free” West, after all, was that the former maintained a “closed” system managed by a strong central government, while the latter restrained government power and ensured protections for citizens’ personal liberties. In the Soviet Union, government apparatchiks constructed and disseminated official “truths.” In the U.S.-led West, no government had a legitimate monopoly over truth.
Yet what do we see today? Western governments are in a tizzy over so-called “disinformation” and “misinformation.” Again, for those who lived through the Cold War, government attempts to classify information as “good” or “bad” stinks of Soviet communism. Hunting down foreign “disinformation” was an obsession for the Soviets. Children were taught from an early age to report anyone (even parents!) heard uttering “incorrect” opinions. It was a crime against the State to publicly express “misinformation,” and many people lost their lives for doing so. A stark dividing line, we thought, separated the West from the Soviets: Communists controlled speech, while Western citizens were encouraged to speak their minds.
To see Western governments recycle the same Soviet vocabulary in a totalitarian quest to police language is disheartening. Those who fought to defend the West from communism did not put their lives on the line so that future Western governments could oversee “disinformation” boards, “hate speech” police, or censorship committees. The Soviets used similarly oppressive tools to subjugate citizens behind the Iron Curtain for seventy years. A “Digital Curtain” monitoring what Westerners say is no less threatening.
During the Cold War, Westerners took pride in repeating some version of this statement: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. There was no parenthetical caveat along the lines of, unless what you’re saying may be designated by the government as misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, or toxic hate speech. The inclusion of such a glaring exception would have entirely nullified what it means to defend free speech. Any Western government that claims to protect free speech while simultaneously asserting the power to determine what kinds of ideas may be expressed out loud shares a common spirit with the former Soviet Union.
Societies wise enough to protect the public expression of an individual citizen’s thoughts understand that government agents are the natural aggressors from whom citizens need protection. When governments intercede in the public forum to police what can and cannot be said, they will always claim to be doing so for the public’s own good. Tyranny is forever clothed in the garments of benevolence. Depending upon governments to secure free speech is like hiring wolves to guard the sheep. Neither survives.
What Westerners have learned during the interregnum between the Cold War’s conclusion and the emerging censorship State being constructed today is that Western governments were never faithful stewards of the public’s natural liberties. They told us that they were for free speech and against Soviet-style oppression, but they didn’t mean real free speech. They meant speech relatively aligned with the governments’ own interests.
While Western governments have long championed their countries’ newspapers and broadcast stations as exemplary models for a free press, they hide the ways that government agents often apply pressure to “independent” news publications to keep Western citizens from learning unsanctioned — and potentially explosive — truths. Some news groups — such as the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — are explicitly taxpayer-funded, government-run operations. Even privately-run news publications, however, are corralled through a system of broadcast regulations, licensing agreements, national security laws, and not-so-subtle government threats. As much as the Soviet Union deserved to be denounced for its steady stream of State-produced propaganda, the West has always operated its own version of a State press.
If you go back in time to watch old network news shows from the second half of the twentieth century, modern eyes and ears immediately see and hear how manufactured broadcast news always was. In the United States, three national anchors on three prestigious networks all repeated similar scripts for decades. They covered the same stories. They shared the same points of view. They produced the same “narratives.” Three decades after the widespread adoption of the personal computer and the communication revolution unleashed by the Internet, however, the same news sources that Americans trusted decades ago now sound remarkably fake. The illusion of an independent news media keeping government power in check has been permanently shattered.
It is easy to condemn governments responsible for gulags and mass murder as intrinsically evil. It is far more difficult to recognize tyranny when governments psychologically manipulate and enfeeble their citizens. Manufacturing the public’s consent to be harmed is much like an abusive spouse or parent conditioning members of the household to feel responsible for their own beatings. When governments subdue citizens’ minds, victimized citizens wear invisible chains. Conversely, when citizens begin thinking for themselves, they see the abusive behaviors of their government much more clearly.
A significant shift in social consciousness has occurred this century. Citizens have come to understand that all forms of government naturally gravitate toward tyranny. Therefore, preserving personal freedom starts at home. The struggle against government coercion is a kind of never-ending cold war.
The most troubling sign for the West’s future is Western governments’ stubborn refusal to listen to their citizens. They are still stuck in last century’s paradigm when governments easily controlled public opinion. Shocked that they are no longer capable of subtly manipulating the masses with appeals to authority and a steady diet of carefully crafted network news, Western governments would rather demonize free speech than accept limits to their power.
In essence, Western governments that once defined themselves as protectors of liberty and enemies of tyranny now openly scorn free expression and defend censorship. They pursue the old Soviet model while labeling their opponents “extremists.” The problem for Western governments, however, is that those being demonized give no indication that they will yield.
Right now Western news publications and government-controlled broadcasters are busy talking about the Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Hamas war, and the looming China-Taiwan war. But there is another war shaping up much closer to home between Western governments and their citizens. It concerns the very foundations of Western civilization. It concerns the public’s right to reject Establishment narratives and determine its own future. It concerns a basic question: What does it mean to be a free nation?
Either citizens will reclaim control over their governments, or governments will succeed in silencing their citizens. That’s the preeminent contest of the twenty-first century.
Image: Pezibear via Pixabay, Pixabay License.